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“That’s not—,” Imfamnia said.
“One of you is bound to kill the other,” AuRon continued. “I wonder which it will be. And who will move first. I imagine historians will be debating the subject for centuries. The Red Queen has the advantage, in that if Rayg kills one, another can take its place. Perhaps a new tree is growing somewhere, so she has a supply of copies. Unless Rayg has figured out where the new tree is. In the Lavadome, somewhere, I expect. Down below in the crystalline caverns?
“Now, from the Red Queen’s point of view, the job is much easier. She has the physical advantage, being in a dragon. Rayg is just one wizard, and right now he’s passing orders to his bodyguard.”
“Blather and rot,” Rayg said. “Sing another pleasant little ditty, AuRon, while I carve up your mate’s breast.” Rayg stepped across the room with a long, razor-edged knife.
AuRon could feel the tension in the air, like the energy stored in the Lavadome’s crystals.
“Imfamnia, ware!” AuRon shouted.
Rayg had done nothing, of course, but Imfamnia didn’t know that. She crouched and spat fire in Rayg’s direction.
He cartwheeled out of the way, showing the agility of an elvish dancer. He reached into his voluminous overcoat and hurled a handful of glittering, starlike spiked shapes at Imfamnia. They passed through her scale like arrows shot through a gauze curtain, leaving black rings at the holes.
Imfamnia howled in rage and pain. Smoke from her flame filled the room. The trolls hauled on the chains and dragged AuRon and Natasatch to the ground.
But he could still see the action. And, more important, breathe. Maddened, Imfamnia threw herself at Rayg, who jumped out of the way again, perhaps not quite so quickly as the last time. Instead of an elvish dancer, he was a supremely agile human warrior.
Imfamnia crashed into the hard stone of his tower, cracking it and opening a wide fissure in a window. Scale and bits of masonry flew. AuRon wondered who’d built the tower. Certainly not dwarfs if the base cracked from just the force of a dragon striking it.
“I think, Rayg, you overbuilt. I’m no dwarf, but it looks like you built your tower on a poor foundation,” Natasatch said.
The tower swayed but did not give way.>The troll panicked and released her and she turned as she fell away, dodged a griffaran, and opened her wings again. DharSii fell in a tight series of spirals on his good wing, heading for the unforgiving mountainside beneath the Lavadome’s crest.
Chapter 20
With Rayg and Imfamnia leading the way up, they climbed Imperial Rock.
“You’re welcome to the throne room, if you want to eat and rest for a bit. Regalia certainly has no use for it anymore. It’s cleaner than most quarters. Some of the lower levels are still a bit—damp,” Rayg said.
A troll led each of them. It held a thick piece of chain wrapped around their necks. One hard pull from the trolls just under the jaw and their vertebrae would snap.
“Each of you will do anything to keep the other alive,” Rayg said. “You won’t risk fighting us, because the trolls will throttle you. If you try to escape, I’ll get one. Which means I’ll get both of you.”
“Weakness indeed,” Imfamnia said.
“Yes, it’s better to partner with someone you despise,” AuRon said. “Perhaps you two will set the new social standard.”
Imfamnia laughed. “I’m remembering why she used to admire you.”
“What are you going to do with us?” AuRon asked.
“In memory of your kindly brother,” Rayg said, “we’ll keep you alive, but imprisoned. I need a few couples for breeding stock, after all. Someone has to produce my perfected dragons.”
Can we find the strength to die together, AuRon? Natasatch asked. I won’t be chained in the dark again.
I won’t have my offspring declawed and desensitized.
They led them up onto the gardens atop Imperial Rock and toward Rayg’s lab.
“I’m just going to do one minor operation,” Rayg said. “I’ll sever the muscles around your firebladder. Better safe than spontaneously combusted.”
“You gave us a scare, there, dragon,” the wizard continued “We weren’t really ready to move for a few years yet. I would have liked some more time to gather the rest of the sun-shard, but I have enough to control the Lavadome and see through the various veils of space and time.”
“Time? You can tell the future?”
“I’ll keep a few dragons alive, for distilling youth draughts. They won’t keep me going forever, of course, but a thousand-year lifespan should be enough for me to design an even more perfect vessel.”
